Trayvon - the Caribbean American perspective

Less than 24 hours after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, two very different rallies were staged in New York City.

The first saw a crowd of thousands marching from Union Square to Times Square.

They carried placards and skittles, while some were brave enough to wear hoodies in the blistering July heat.

Simultaneous protests broke out across Florida, Boston, and Washington DC.

Most of them, with the exception of Oakland, California, were peaceful, a far cry from the “riots” that had been predicted on social media.

“The system is racist, we’re not gonna take it,” they shouted through bullhorns. “No justice, no peace!” they chanted.

“We’re here to show that black lives have value too!”

On Twitter

Protests rang out on social media as well.

Bennet Roach, a journalist with the Montserrat Reporter, tweeted: “This case will change America!! If evidence was inconsistent in reverse verdict would be the reverse.”

For Trinidadian soca singer Fay Ann Lyons, who also took to Twitter after the verdict, it was a time of introspection.

She engaged with her fans on Twitter for more than an hour about the verdict. At one point she tweeted, “Soooo hear nah... Does this now mean we have to be careful wearing hoodies or just careful being black, unarmed and wearing hoodies??”

A 1998 study by John Ogbu , a professor of Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley, found that black immigrants (from the Caribbean and Africa) found greater success in the education system than African Americans.

This was because they often chose to live in more racially diverse neighbourhoods.

It was also because they lacked a connection to the US black community and “trusted white institutions more than non-immigrant blacks”.

The study goes on to say that it’s not that these immigrants have embraced whiteness, because they still hold on to their culture and traditions. Instead, they don’t reject characteristics simply because of their being seen as “white”.

There, the main character, a bi-racial man, rejects his black heritage after witnessing a lynching. He wonders why anyone would want to be part of a culture where its people are expendable.

Stephen Casmier is a professor of literature at Saint Louis University in St Louis, Missouri.

He has taught courses on post-colonial literature that touch directly on the black Caribbean identity.

Like Mr Hamid, Prof Casmier sees why the Caribbean population may not want to identify with the African American culture.

“The American melting pot always worked on this principle: people melted together because they were not the lowest of the low - black people, or niggers. Who would blame anyone if they could somehow avoid this status?” Prof Casmier asks.

He goes on to say: “We, after a generation or two, we are really all the same. The issues are the same. I wonder why anyone of African descent who has somewhere else to go would come here.

“The risk has always been high of re-enslavement. And it's still high through a mass incarceration system that targets African and Latinos.”

Stop and frisk

The Trayvon Martin protests in New York doubled as a protest against the highly contentious stop-and-frisk program, where police officers can stop, question and search someone they deem to be suspicious.

Raquel Irizarry, who works as a volunteer for the Police Reform Organizing Project, handed out petitions to end stop-and-frisk.

She was armed with statistics, ready to recite them to anyone who asked.

“In 2002, when [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg took office, 97,000 people had been stopped, the majority of them were black and Latino,” she bellowed.

There are commentators who will justify New York’s stop-and-frisk, such as Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, who wrote, “After all, if young black males are your shooters, then it ought to be young black males whom the police stop and frisk.”

For Prof Casmier, that kind of comment poses a fight-or-flight dilemma. He argues that the black population can continue to struggle to have their voices heard, or they can leave.

“Maybe you Caribbean cats with power at home can make a place for us, and welcome some of us to come in out of the hate and live on your islands,” he said.

“Because this place is cold and after all this time, it is only incrementally getting better.”